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The worldwide trend to high participation highereducation: dynamics of social stratification in inclusivesystems
Simon Marginson1
Published online: 2 June 2016� The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Worldwide participation in higher education now includes one-third of the age
cohort and is growing at an unprecedented rate. The tendency to rapid growth, leading
towards high participation systems (HPS), has spread to most middle-income and some
low-income countries. Though expansion of higher education requires threshold devel-
opment of the state and the middle class, it is primarily powered not by economic growth
but by the ambitions of families to advance or maintain social position. However,
expansion is mostly not accompanied by more equal social access to elite institutions. The
quality of mass higher education is often problematic. Societies vary in the extent of
upward social mobility from low-socio-economic-status backgrounds. The paper explores
the intersection between stratified social backgrounds and the stratifying structures in HPS.
These differentiating structures include public/private distinctions in schooling and higher
education, different fields of study, binary systems and tiered hierarchies of institutions, the
vertical ‘stretching’ of stratification in competitive HPS, and the unequalising effects of
tuition. Larger social inequalities set limits on what education can achieve. Countries with
high mobility sustain a consensus about social equality, and value rigorous and autono-
mous systems of learning, assessment and selection in education.
Keywords Higher education � Educational participation � Enrolment growth � Mass
education � Educational equality � Social stratification
& Simon [email protected]
1 UCL Institute of Education, University College London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL,UK
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High Educ (2016) 72:413–434DOI 10.1007/s10734-016-0016-x
Introduction
This article reviews the dynamics of high participation systems (HPS) of higher education,
including the implications for social stratification and inequality. As measured by the UNESCO
Gross Tertiary Enrolment Rate (GTER),1 worldwide participation is increasing very rapidly by
historical standards, at 1 % a year, and nowconstitutes one-third of the nominal school leaver age
group. The tendency towards HPS, systems in which the GTER exceeds 50 %, has spread from
the high-income and post-Soviet zones to include the overwhelming majority of middle-income
countries, and some low-income countries. An expanding higher education system has become
one of the norms of modernisation, pre-eminent as a social differentiator and allocator (Baker
2011), focus of the hopes of some families and then most families, and one part of the duty of
states—likeairports and roads, cleanwater, provincial hospitals andaviablebanking system.This
foreshadows a world in which knowledge, skills and personal agency will be much more widely
distributed. Whether this is also a more equal world remains to be seen.
The article begins with conceptual framing. It argues that the ubiquitous growth of tertiary
participation and the scramble for relative advantage within education are both sourced in the
universal family desire for betterment, in social systems in which higher education functions
as a positional good in a partly zero-sumworld and can never fully satisfying all who enter it.
The section that follows provides a ‘birds-eye’ empirical view of the world tendency to HPS
and explores the drivers of that tendency. The article then looks more closely at the social
patterning of outcomes in HPS, where the stratification of ambitious populations meets the
stratified higher education systems that they use. It draws on recent research into social and
educational stratification; and research into social, economic and educational inequalities.
Most of this research is drawn from high-income countries, especially the USA. Social
research is always partly specific to context in which the data are derived. However, there are
insights in this research for all higher education systems, including emerging systems. The
conclusion lists issues for middle- and low-income countries.
The universal desire for betterment through education
HPS of higher education are initiated, framed and regulated by states. Graduates are
absorbed to a greater or lesser extent in national and global economies. However, the
pivotal point where society meets higher education and drives its expansion is not public
regulation or employer demand. As is further discussed below, though the social demand
for higher educational opportunities is consistent and rising, the needs of states and
employers for educational growth are partial and episodic; and neither agency intersects
with higher education institutions on a daily basis. Nor is research the pivot, though it
creates powerful global knowledge and sustains the social status and internal culture of
elite universities. Rather, as first suggested by Trow (1973) in his essay on the transition
from elite to mass-to-universal systems, the ongoing dynamism of higher education is
powered by the ambitions of families for social position and of students for self-realisation.
As Adam Smith remarked in The Wealth of Nations (1776), ‘the desire of bettering our
condition… comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave’
(Smith 1979, p. 441). In contemporary societies, those desires, particularly the hopes of
1 The numerator of the GTER is total enrolment in 2-year programs and above; the denominator is theschool leaver age cohort in the national population. The GTER is exaggerated by participation additional tothe age cohort and appearing in the numerator, including migrants, international and mature age students,but facilitates comparisons between countries and over time.
414 High Educ (2016) 72:413–434
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parents for children, have become primarily focused on formal education, which is seen as
the privileged pathway to professional work. Family ambitions have no ultimate limiting
factor and feed on themselves. Over time the social demand for higher education accu-
mulates and tends towards the universal, as Trow predicted it would, and higher education
provision becomes large, growing and increasingly ubiquitous.
Thus universal desires for social betterment are articulated through higher education
systems that are themselves becoming universal. But the opportunities that education is
meant to bring are not universal, not in capitalist societies that, regardless of whether they
are low-, middle- or high-income, are stratified by unequal earnings and hierarchical
power, in which at any given time, by definition, there is an absolute limit to the number of
socially advantaged positions on offer. HPS of higher education can never bring every
family what it seeks; and when participation becomes universal (as it already is in ele-
mentary and secondary education in many countries), at the margins of participation,
students will gain no material betterment at all, though they may still gain forms of
personal enlargement. In short, relative advantage is crucial. Socially, higher education
functions as a positional good (Hirsch 1976; Marginson 1997) in which its sorting role is as
important as the absolute opportunities that it brings. Starting positions are unequal and
some pathways carry more value than others. Most families are deeply aware of this.
With families actively striving for position under conditions that they do not control, the
formative effects of high education in society are experienced as a structure/agency dialectic.
States and higher education institutions together structure higher education systems, stratifying
the forms of provision and their cost and value. In the interaction between on the one hand
structural forms and regulatory processes, and on the other hand the active agency of families—
who have little scope to directly influence the forms of educational differentiation, but work the
structures that face themaswell as they can, in their own interest—higher education sifts and sorts
the population. Its precise role in social allocation,which varies fromHPS toHPS, determines the
extent to which higher education renders society more equal, or reproduces pre-existing
inequalities. Here HPS vary in the ‘slope’ of their stratification of educational opportunities, and
the autonomous power of institutions to shape social outcomes. Though all families pursue their
own interests, theymay find themselves locatedwithinHPS that either intensify competition and
tightly limit educational and social success or within HPS that are organised on the basis of equal
rights and the common good, and enhance the scope for socialmobility.Within the constraints of
resources, and social relations of power, between them states (especially) and institutions can
increase the extent to which an HPS can have equalising effects.
Yet constraints of resources and class power matter. States in many low-income
countries cannot build inclusive HPS. HPS in very unequal societies, such as today’s
United States (US), tend to be highly stratified, and strengthen not weaken the effects of
social background in educational and social outcomes (Marginson 2016b).
The trend to high participation higher education
In 1971, 9.9 % of the world school leaver age cohort enrolled in tertiary education of
2 years or more in duration,2 8.4 % of women and 11.5 % of men. Higher education was
mostly a small elite sector, with most graduates becoming professionals or managers. The
2 ‘Tertiary education’ includes both OECD Type 5A degrees of 3 years or more and shorter Type 5Bprograms of two years fulltime equivalent, for example US community colleges. Here, all such programmesare treated as ‘higher education’.
High Educ (2016) 72:413–434 415
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GTER exceeded 15 % in only 19 countries, led by the US at 47.0 %, the world’s first mass
higher education system (UNESCO 2015). Less than two generations later, in 2013 the
situation was totally different. Of the school leaver age cohort, 32.9 % entered higher
education, and the GTER for women (34.5 %) exceeded that of men (31.3 %). Graduates
entered a wide range of occupations across and down the labour markets. Mass higher
education was the global norm and was moving towards something more universal. No less
than 102 countries had reached 15 % and the GTER exceeded 50 % in 51 countries, led by
South Korea at 98.4 %. In 1971, South Korea’s GTER had been only 7.2 % (UNESCO
2015).
Between 1970 and 2013, the world number of tertiary students multiplied by 6.12 while
global population multiplied by 1.93 (UNESCO 2015; World Bank 2015). From the late
1990s onwards, the expansion of participation accelerated, as Fig. 1 shows. An increase of
1 % a year means 20 % in 20 years. This suggests that the worldwide GTER will reach
50 % inside the next generation, a staggering change.
This tendency to HPS is a process of combined and uneven development (Naidoo 2014).
Participation is growing rapidly in the overwhelming majority of countries with the
minimum capacity to mount a higher education system, except the small number like South
Korea already near-universal levels. However, in 2013 regional GTERs varied from
76.6 % in North America and Western Europe and 71.4 % in Eastern Europe, to 22.8 % in
South Asia and only 8.2 % in sub-Saharan Africa (Table 1).
Statistically, all high-income countries and most middle-income countries are tending
towards or have exceeded the 50 % mark. The first part of Fig. 1 shows growth in
regions with aboveaverage participation. It includes Latin America and the Caribbean,
where systems such as Venezuela, Chile and Argentina already exceed 50 %; and East
Asia and the Pacific, demographically dominated by China, where enrolments have
climbed rapidly in the last 15 years. Apart from China, the GTER exceeds 50 % in all
systems in East Asia. The second part of Fig. 1 shows the growth paths of regions with
below-world-average GTERs. Again, however, the main tendency is growth. Many
middle- and low-income countries have shared the long surge in enrolments. Though
sub-Saharan Africa is the principal gap in mass higher education; its GTER has near
doubled since 2000. South Asia was the other gap, and GTERs remain low in Pakistan
and Bangladesh, but in the last decade the GTER has doubled in India to reach 23.9 %
in 2013, and also doubled in Pakistan. Only the Central Asian region breaks the pattern
of rapid growth.
Higher education in emerging countries
The most rapidly growing higher education systems include those of Turkey, where from
2000 to 2012 the GTER rose from 25.3 to 69.4 % (44.1 %), Albania (41.7 %), Cuba
(40.5 %), Chile (37.2), Belarus (37.0 %) and Iran (36.0 %). It must be emphasised that the
tendency to HPS extends to emerging nation states and has become integral to their
emergence. China, India and Indonesia have three of the world’s four largest populations.
In China, the GTER rose from 3.1 % in 1990 and 7.8 % in 2000 to 29.7 % in 2013. In
India, it rose from 5.9 to 23.9 % in 1990–2013, and in Indonesia from 8.5 to 31.5 % in
1990–2012 (UNESCO 2015).
The GTER is rising strongly in the great majority of countries where per capita GDP
exceeds $5000 USD (UNESCO 2015; World Bank 2015), and in some countries below that
level. The low-income nations where higher education is yet to take off have middle
classes that are too small and weak to demand educational opportunities or states that lack
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the capacity for longer-term planning and/or tax-based financing of educational infras-
tructure. Table 2 lists the participation rate in 1971, 1980–2010 and 2013 in all nations
with a per capita GDP of $5000–10,000 in 2013, in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms
and constant 2011 prices, for which UNESCO provides data. The world average per capita
GDP was $12,680. There are data gaps, especially in Africa, but of the eighteen countries
where 2013 data are available, the GTER exceeded 15 % in fourteen, and in two it was
Fig. 1 Gross Tertiary Enrolment Ratio (%), world and world regions: 1971–2013. [data n.a.] = regionaldata for Central Asia not available for 1971–1979. Source: Chart prepared by the author using data fromUNESCO (2015)
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above 50 %. Only the African countries, Swaziland and the Republic of the Congo, were
still waiting for participation to climb. Of the countries with GTER data for both 2000 and
2013, all but two experienced rapid growth. Georgia was the only case of decline but its
GTER remained at the world average.
Drivers of growth
What are the drivers of the worldwide trend to HPS? The growth of participation is often
represented as a function of the economic need for more skills and higher productivity in
the markets for human capital. However, earnings are affected by many factors other than
education (Piketty 2014, pp. 304–321); and beginning with Trow (1973), a succession of
sociologists have debunked assumptions that participation rates are mediated by demand
for educated labour or its value in rates of return (e.g. Schofer and Meyer 2005; Teichler
2009; Baker 2011). HPS coincide with economic modernisation everywhere, and demand
for particular skills can affect graduate output, but total GTERs are rising sharply in HPS
with wide variations in rates of economic growth and employment, and in industry/skill
configurations (Marginson 2016a). While graduates enjoy measurable advantages over
non-graduates, and often display unreasoning optimism about their prospects (Arum and
Roksa 2014, p. 85 and 105; Hansen 2011, pp. 80–81), relations between higher education
and work are fragmented (Robst 2007, p. 398; Roksa and Levey 2010, p. 391), the payoffs
to mass higher education are unclear, and empirical evidence for human capital style
decision-making, such as the use of rates of return data, is weak. Occupational status
appears to be at least as stronger a motivator as earnings (e.g. Triventi 2013b, pp. 55–57;
Thomsen et al. 2013, p. 471; Zhao 2012; Hu and Vargas 2015; Roksa 2005).
It is sometimes argued that the expansion of participation is explained by the creden-
tialist strategies of educational institutions and the gateway strategies of occupational
groups. Mass education institutions do have a vested interest in growth. But occupational
licensing and credential structures vary, and supply side manoeuvres cannot explain a
social tendency as powerful as HPS. Credentialism is a follower of educational expansion,
rather than a leader.
Table 1 Gross Tertiary Enrolment Ratio (GTER) by world region: 1971, 1980, 1990 2000, 2010 and 2013.Source: Table prepared by author, using data from UNESCO (2015)
1971 (%) 1980 1990 2000 2010 (%) 2013 (%)
World 9.9 12.3 13.6 19.0 29.3 32.9
North America and Western Europe 30.8 38.5 48.6 60.0 76.9 76.6
Central and Eastern Europe 29.8 30.4 33.9 42.8 67.9 71.4
Latin American and the Caribbean 7.0 13.3 16.9 22.8 40.9 43.9
East Asia and the Pacific 2.9 5.1 7.3 15.4 27.3 33.0
Arab States 6.0 9.9 11.4 18.6 25.5 38.1
Central Asia n.a. 24.4 25.3 22.0 26.7 26.1
South and West Asia 4.2 4.5 5.7 8.7 17.4 22.8
Sub-Saharan Africa 0.9 1.8 3.0 4.4 7.7 8.2
First available GTER data for Central Asia are for 1980, at 24.4 %
n.a. not available
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In most systems, governments regulate enrolment levels, sometimes in the private as
well as public sectors. The common sense assumption is that system size is determined by
policy, funding and regulation. However, states seem to play their largest role in the first
growth of mass higher education, establishing sites and funding tuition and living costs to
build social demand. As Trow (1973) argued, once higher education is entrenched as the
route to a middle class life—once social demand for the positional good has been nor-
malised—expansion secures a continuing momentum towards the universal. Families want
higher education because it provides opportunities for upward social mobility, or at least is
a means of maintaining status and a hedge against downward mobility. It also offers
students prospects of self-formation (Marginson 2014) and self-actualisation.3 As the
Table 2 Gross Tertiary Enrolment Ratio (GTER) in countries with per capita PPP gross domestic productof $5000–10,000 per annum, constant 2011 USD: 1971, 2000 and 2013. Source: Table prepared by author,using data from World Bank (2015); UNESCO (2015)
Country Per capita GDP 2013Constant 2011 USD
GTER 1971 (%) GTER 2000 (%) GTER 2013 (%)
Albania $9961 13.9 13.8 58.5
Indonesia $9729 2.8 15.1 31.5
Sri Lanka $9426 1.1 n.a. 18.8
Jamaica $8607 5.2 15.4 28.7
Ukraine $8338 41.2 48.7 79.0
Belize $8215 1.0 n.a. 25.9
Paraguay $7833 4.4 15.7 35.1
Armenia $7527 n.a. 34.9 46.1
El Salvador $7515 3.7 20.7 25.9
Fiji $7502 1.0 15.8 n.a.
Guatemala $7063 3.3 n.a. 18.7
Morocco $6967 1.3 9.4 22.5
Georgia $6930 n.a. 37.8 33.1
Guyana $6336 1.6 n.a. 12.9
Philippines $6326 17.7 n.a. 33.8
Cabo Verde $6232 n.a. 1.9 22.8
Swaziland $5998 0.6 4.5 5.3
Bolivia $5934 8.1 34.9 n.a.
Republic of Congo $5680 0.7 n.a. 6.9
Samoa $5502 1.0 7.6 n.a.
India $5244 5.0 9.5 24.7
Vietnam $5125 n.a. 9.3 24.6
There are no GTER data available for Namibia, Angola and Nigeria. Data for Uzbekistan (12.6 %) andBosnia and Herzegovina (21.4 %) are available only for 2000, and for Bhutan (10.9 %) only for 2013. Thesecountries are all omitted from the table. In Indonesia, GTER data are for 1972 not 1971, and 2012 not 2013;in Paraguay data are for 2010 not 2013; in Fiji for 2003 not 2000
PPP purchasing power parity, n.a. data not available
3 From Brendan Cantwell.
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frontier of participation advances, graduates maintain a labour market advantage over non-
graduates. Though not all graduates have professional jobs when the GTER reaches 50 %
and more, and returns at the margin of participation decrease, the penalties attached to non-
participation increase. Higher education becomes a defensive necessity. Once growth starts
to feeds on itself, social demand for higher education is no longer created by states, except
among marginal social groups. In countries with tuition fees, middle class families are
more willing to share the costs, as they cannot afford to absent themselves from higher
education. With the growing total cost of provision, many states introduce or increase
tuition fees, though some also focus on improving the participation of under-represented
groups. As HPS expand, apparently win–win issues of inclusion are easier to manage than
are the always-awkward facts of system stratification.
Despite occasional concerns about ‘over-education’, states mostly support expansion at
the HPS stage. Why, given that the demand for graduates is not clear-cut and higher
education is expensive? HPS are the global policy norm, the creed of the World Bank and
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but this is not the
driver, and nor is the economy. Rather, states are attuned to pressures from both social
elites and growing middle classes who want better educational opportunities for their
children. Some states respond to pressure from elites to nurture high-fee private schools
and Ivy League universities, or maintain league table competitions in schooling that centre
value on affluent suburbs (Dorling 2014, p. 28). Other states resist the rich and powerful.
However, all states respond to pressure from below for educational expansion. Middle- and
low-income countries achieve a mass-to-universal higher education system when that
pressure from below become irresistible. This happens whether the nation-state is a con-
tested democracy or a polity ruled by one party. In all HPS, it is no longer practical to
impose an arbitrary limit on participation, as when higher education was a small elite
system. Expanding higher education is also consistent with state political agendas. It is
easier to create educational opportunities than jobs. It transfers responsibility for social
outcomes from the state to educational institutions and families. UK and Australia even
have ‘demand-driven’ systems (Kemp and Norton 2014) in which the number of publicly
funded students is no longer capped—though the subsidy has been cut to manage costs.
Cost transfers, from states with limited taxation revenues, to higher education institutions
and/or families or graduates, are a common though not universal feature of the evolution of
HPS.
Social demand for access is also magnified by the concentration of middle class agency
in urban areas. Between 1970 and 2010, the worldwide proportion of people living in cities
rose from 36.6 to 51.6 %. In emerging countries, urbanisation is driven by the movement
from pre-capitalist rural areas to capitalist development in the cities. In China, the urban
share climbed from 17.4 % in 1970 to 49.2 % in 2010, in Indonesia from 17.1 to 49.9 %,
and in India from 19.8 to 30.9 % (UNDESA 2012). When the largest countries are
arranged in order of the extent of urbanisation, and their GTERs are graphed, the line of
best fit suggests a strong association between urbanisation and the GTER (Marginson
2016a). Projections of major growth in the global middle classes4 by 2030 (e.g. Kharas and
Gertz 2010) imply corresponding growth in demand for higher education. This is not to say
all people living in cities are middle class or that aspirations for higher education are
confined to such persons. The location of higher education in cities brings it within viewing
distance of the whole urban population.
4 Kharas and Gertz (2010) define ‘middle class’ persons as those with incomes of USD $10–100 a day.
420 High Educ (2016) 72:413–434
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Social inclusion and stratification
By definition, HPS higher education is more socially inclusive than elite higher education.
The trend to HPS lifts the threshold of human agency, capability and rights (Sen 2000),
provided that the higher education is suffiiciently formative to augment people’s capa-
bilities and/or social trajectories. In a high participation-based society, the average indi-
vidual should be more comfortable with knowledge and information and other tools of
reflexivity, more effective and creative in communication and civil organisation, more
capable in dealing with corporations and governments, and potentially more proactive,
flexible and productive at work. These are important gains. But does high participation
higher education provide all young persons with equal educational opportunity? Does it
render emerging countries more open and mobile, more socially and economically equal?
These goals are more difficult to achieve.
First, not just schooling and higher education but prior social inequalities determine
whether people from low-income families, remote locations or excluded minorities
improve their social circumstances. Second, not all participation in HPS is of equal value.
Higher education provides a stratified structure of opportunity, from elite universities and
high-status professional degrees to the much larger number of places in mass education
with uncertain outcomes. Third, students from affluent families often dominate the high-
value positions within higher education. Populations are socially stratified, HPS higher
education is stratified, and outcomes are stratified. The objective of a policy designed to
enhance equity is to modify the extent to which these forms of stratification reproduce each
other, opening up the potential for upward social mobility via the HPS. Countries vary in
the extent and type of stratification. HPS design makes a difference.
Family background and educational stratification
In HPS, the principal intrinsic limit to social equality of opportunity is the persistence of
irreducible differences between families in economic, social and cultural resources. Policy
can partly compensate for economic differences but cannot eliminate the potency of the
family in cultural capital and social networks (Mountford-Zimdars and Sabbagh 2013). In a
comparison of 11 European countries, Triventi (2013a) finds that ‘individuals with better
educated parents have a higher probability of attaining a degree from a top institution, of a
higher standard, and with better occupational returns’ (p. 499). In another four-nation
study, he notes that the effects of social background on graduates’ occupational outcomes
vary by country in the extent of educational expansion, the social selectivity of education,
the connections between education and the labour market, and ‘the degree of institutional
stratification in higher education’ (Triventi 2013b, pp. 47–48).
… stratification of higher education refers to the degree of variation in selectivity,
quality/prestige and labour market value of different courses, fields of study and
institutions. All else being equal, the higher is the stratification of higher education,
the more important is the role of social background in the occupational attainment
process (Triventi 2013b, pp. 48–49),
The HPS trend increases the pool of graduates but does not increase the number of high-
value social outcomes that graduates can reach, which is determined by relations of social
power and equality/inequality beyond education. Expansion exacerbates social competition
in education (Arum et al. 2007, pp. 7–8), and this in turn enhances the effects of prior
social inequalities. ‘All else being equal, countries with a mass higher education system
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may be characterised by stronger competition among graduates in the transition to the
labour market and, thus, by a larger effect of social background on occupational returns’
(Triventi 2013b p. 48). The same trend to HPS, which enhances equity as inclusion, also
increases the regressive effects of family background on educational and social outcomes.
Thus, research on the growth of participation finds that as systems expand, class
inequalities in access to elite higher education and career outcomes are not reduced (Arum
et al. 2007, p. 3). Stratification effects trump the equalisation of educational quantity
through growth. ‘Qualitative differentiation replaces inequalities in the quantity of the
education obtained’ (Arum et al. 2007, p. 4). The national cases in Stratification in Higher
Education (Shavit et al. 2007) demonstrate that as higher education expands, affluent
families dominate the elite institutions. Newly participating social layers are largely
confined to the sub-elite institutions where participation alone is not enough to generate
strong social outcomes. The exceptions to these generalisations are when social mobility is
unusually high, as in the 1960s/1970s in the US when higher education and social mobility
grew together (Marginson 2016b), and/or when a determined policy effort is made by
government to match growth with equalisation. Only under these circumstances is the
natural tendency to greater inequality corrected.
Why does educational stratification tend to reinforce prior social inequalities, and why
does expansion naturally enhance the effects of social background, or make no difference?
Here, the point about the growth of HPS being driven by family aspirations for social
position—for higher education as a positional good—rather than being driven by state
ordering, or the needs of the economy, gains significance. HPS are populated by families
that apply active agency to the contest for educational and social success, at every stage.
Families with financial, social, cultural or political capitals bring those capitals to bear on
education and continue to do so in the transition to work and beyond (Borgen 2015).
Oxfam refers to ‘opportunity hoarding’, whereby ‘social disparities become permanent’.
Privileged groups ‘take control of valuable resources and assets for their benefit’, such as
‘access to quality education’ (Oxfam 2014, p. 20). The formal stratification of opportu-
nities on the basis of institutional hierarchies and/or financial barriers provides points of
purchase for family strategies. Whenever there is a hierarchy of value, families with prior
social advantages are best placed to compete for scarce places or pathways that confer the
greatest positional advantages (Triventi 2013b, p. 47; Lucas 2001, 2009). Educational
differentiation allows the elite status of those ‘born into privilege’ to be protected (Arum
et al. 2007, p. 5). HPS are regulated by the degree and type of selectivity and closure,
within a common social regime of openness and inclusion. Social competition at the key
points of transition and selection—entry to higher education, entry to professions and
occupations—enables a fine-grained differentiation of the population, providing scope for
stratified family capacities and strategic acumen.
Nevertheless, as suggested, this institutional reproduction of prior social inequalities is
punctuated by moments (more in some systems than others) when policy, educational
practices and student effort broaden the potential for upward mobility via education.
Stratification between and within institutions
The mechanisms of social and educational stratification are now examined more closely,
before returning to HPS and social mobility.
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Schooling
Some nations pursue a comprehensive approach to schooling with low stratification in
terms of quality. Affluent families in the United Kingdom (UK) can invest in high-fee
private schools, which are especially successful in accessing selective universities.
Spending per student is three times that in state schools. The UK also maintains a state
school hierarchy, where stratification has shifted from the grammar/non-grammar dis-
tinction to market competition for entry into successful comprehensive schools. Under-
valuing state schools increase the value of private education (Cheung and Egerton 2007,
p. 218; Dorling 2014, p. 28 and pp. 40–41). Boliver (2011, 2013) traces unequal social
access to selective UK universities since the 1960s. State school applicants for leading
Russell Group universities and students from black and South Asian ethnic backgrounds
‘were much less likely to receive offers of admission from Russell Group universities, in
comparison with their equivalently qualified peers from private schools and the White
ethnic group’ (Boliver 2013, pp. 344–345). Private school students enjoyed an advantage
equivalent to ‘an additional B-grade A-level’ over state school students with the same
academic achievements (p. 358).
Fields of study in higher education
In HPS in which the institutional hierarchy is relatively ‘flat’, field of study can be more
determining than institution attended of graduate earnings and status. Overall, field of
study is more likely than institution to be associated with earnings differentials, especially
in early years after graduation, while institutional prestige is more likely to be associated
with occupational status and the likelihood of moving into managerial functions (e.g.
Triventi 2013b, pp. 54–57; Hu and Vargas 2015), which may translate into later earnings
advantages (Roksa and Levey 2010). Wolniak et al. (2008) suggest that the STEM dis-
ciplines reinforce the effects of prior family backgrounds, while business and education
degrees provide more scope to change inherited inequalities (p. 135). Borgen (2015, p. 36)
notes that when a high proportion of credentials are generic without clear vocational
pathways, the hierarchy of institutions is more important as a distinguishing factor in
driving family positional strategies. Significantly, this finding applies to both the market-
driven, mixed funded and stratified US system, and the publicly financed and ‘flatter’
Norwegian system.
Vertical and horizontal diversity
In contrast with schooling, in higher education some institutional stratification is inevi-
table, even in egalitarian Nordic societies. Concentrations of top researchers, and student
places in high-status professional programmes, are scarce by nature. Bourdieu (1988) sees
higher education systems as structured on a binary basis between selective institutions with
high prestige that ration their places, and demand-driven mass institutions lacking prestige,
that build volume so as to maximise their revenues and social presence. As the HPS
expands, high-value student places shrink as a proportion of all places. Non-elite higher
education increases in volume but average value declines, though the gap with non-
participation remains. Sitting between the bifurcated elite and mass institutions are the
ambiguous middle players, aspiring to the elite but lacking status and resources. States can
use parcels of funding, the location of specific programmes or mission designations to
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expand the size of this group, for example by spreading middle-level value using the
designation ‘research university’.
National HPS vary in the ‘steepness’ of vertical stratification, and the extent to which
horizontal distinctions based on institutional mission also function as vertical distinctions
of status and resources. Emerging mass higher education often takes a binary form, partly
to protect the mission (and clientele) of the academic universities. The second sector may
emphasise technical–vocational education related to manufacturing, as in Germany, Korea
or Taiwan, or middle professions such as teaching and/or local employment, as in the
Netherlands. System expansion is also associated with a counter-tendency to academic
drift whereby growing second sectors seeks to widen their horizons by acquiring a research
role. In HPS, vertical diversity tends to trump horizontal diversity: given a choice, most
institutions will move beyond the bounds of a non-research mission to the extent necessary
to upgrade status. The movement of erstwhile second sectors into research helped to trigger
the dissolution of binary systems in Australia (1988) and the UK (1992). At present, there
are unresolved pressures for upward drift in the Netherlands. On the other hand, policy,
regulation and custom may retain a stable division of labour, as in Germany and the
California State University (CSU) campuses. The US CSUs are modelled as a ladder to the
University of California (UC). German binary diversity is more horizontal. The fach-
hochschulen tend to have strong labour market outcomes (Teichler 2009).
If they choose, states can manage HPS on the basis of near equality of resources and a
common mission, blurring the tendency to stratification of value by distributing capacity on
a broad basis. Egalitarian system design has shaped universities in the Nordic world,
Belgium, the Netherlands and the German-speaking countries, all of which sustain a rough
equality in degree standing and research missions, though each HPS has a moderate
informal prestige hierarchy. But except for Switzerland, none have ranked universities in
the world top 30 (ARWU 2015). Here, egalitarian system design conflicts with the logic of
‘World-Class Universities’ (WCUs). WCUs are concentrations designed to build research
strength and status at global level, attract academic migrants and foster cross-field industry
innovations (Altbach and Salmi 2011). The WCU model, normalised by global rankings,
affects policy in most countries (Hazelkorn 2011; Marginson 2011). Germany’s Excellence
Initiative and state-induced mergers in Denmark (Salmi 2009) were important departures
from prior egalitarian HPS design. The WCU model is especially attractive to emerging
countries that want to link to the world research system as soon as possible. Given the high
and sustained investment required, one danger is that WCU building will be accompanied
by neglect of the quality of mass higher education, for example the temptation to expand
provision using MOOCs, other low-cost online distance learning, or foreign for-profit
sectors. This policy danger seems chronic in high middle- and middle-income countries
such as Russia, Malaysia and Kazakhstan, and also aspirant systems such as that of
Vietnam, that are pressing for globally ranked universities. For example, in Russia the
WCU goal is in direct tension with policy on regional capacity building.
Public/private diversity
Private sectors have more than one implication for social stratification. The US Ivy League
universities are engines of social advantage. Soares (2007) finds that in 1988–2000, 64 %
of the students of Tier 1 institutions were from the top 10 % American families in income
(p. 167). This social composition reflects not just academic competition but high tuition
and the use of supplementary entry criteria in the form of middle class cultural capital, for
example applicants’ records in music, elite sports and ‘leadership’. Both modes of
424 High Educ (2016) 72:413–434
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differentiation, finance and bio, are strategic opportunities for affluent families. The public
sector UC Berkeley is equally selective in academic terms but runs a progressive tuition
policy based on family income. Entry is free for 45 % of students. Only 28 % are from top
10 % of households in income terms (Soares 2007, pp. 166–167; Douglass 2013, pp. 4–5).
However, it is Ivy League degrees, not UC Berkeley degrees, that provide graduate entry
into elite American firms in law, financing and business services (Rivera l. 2011, 2015).
The private sector is positioned differently outside the US. Most HPS—Korea and the
Philippines are partial exceptions— have few elite private institutions. National research
universities are the focus of family ambition. Where there are large private sectors, as in
Brazil, they provide mass education that expands freely in response to social demand
without the constraint of public fiscal cost. While there are some rapidly growing public
sectors, as in China, on average sectoral diversification facilitates the growth rate of HPS.
However, mass private sectors carry problems of low and variable quality, especially for-
profit colleges, which spend less of their revenue on teaching, and whose degrees lack
potency in the labour market as the US case shows (Mettler 2014, pp. 87–110). There are
also quality problems in mass public sectors in the many countries that underfund them,
but there at least states can readily intervene. However, the HPS that manage quality best
are those supported by a consensus on the norms of universal high-quality education that is
shared by state and citizens. Formal ‘quality assurance’ cannot substitute for this.
Effects of competition
As suggested, in competitive HPS stratification tends to ‘stretch’ over time. Davies and
Zarifa (2012) use Gini coefficients, Lorenz curves and other measures of inequality to
compare the level of stratification in financial resources across 4-year institutions in
Canada and the US over 1971–2006 (p. 143). There is a moderate-to-strong association
between resource concentration and selectivity. In both nations, ‘policy-makers are urging
universities to remake themselves into highly differentiated, competitive, responsive, and
entrepreneurial hubs of activity’, with ‘greater competition for revenue, whether in the
form of tuition-paying clients, fund-raising, or research grants, and … less bountiful and
reliable government support’ (pp. 144–145). Competition for status and resources is
subject to cumulative advantage: strong institutions improve their relative position over
time. ‘Universities that are already older, established and wealthy enter new competitions
for resources with prominent alumni networks, sizeable endowments, favourable locations,
and strategic corporate ties’ (p. 145). The US HPS is ‘strikingly more stratified’ than the
Canadian in financial terms, and ‘dominated by a small number of super-resourced, elite
institutions that are highly distinct from the masses’ and ‘have pulled away from the pack’
(pp. 150 and 154). However, in both HPS stratification has notably increased, especially in
the last decade.
Stratified structure and self-stratified agency
Although almost all families want to maximise the social position of their children, family
agency is not a constant over time, or between countries, or between socio-economic status
(SES) groups. Confronted by the stratified structure of provision, families respond in a
differentiated fashion that reflects varied material circumstances and cultural sets. Whereas
upper-middle class families may put great effort into achieving the highest possible
position within the HPS, low SES and remote students are less likely to nurture high
ambitions, more likely to be deterred by cost, more likely to focus on secure and
High Educ (2016) 72:413–434 425
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predictable employment-related paths rather than diffuse intellectual formation, more
likely to believe they lack the cultural capital to survive and perform at university, and less
familiar with performance and application strategies. Self-stratification happens even in
free Nordic HPS (Thomsen et al. 2013, p. 457 and pp. 471–474). However, all else being
equal, stratified HPS with price barriers tend to evoke larger self-stratification effects, and
are more likely to empty out degree completion altogether in the bottom SES layers.
‘Under-matching’ in applications
In a census-level study of all 2008 applicants to US higher education, Hoxby and Avery
(2013) track the applications of ‘high-achieving’ school students, ranked in the top 4 % by
SAT scores and grade point averages (p. 2). These students number 25,000–35,000 each
year. In 2008, 17 % were in the bottom family income quartile (pp. 14–15). The vast
majority of these low-income high achievers did not apply to a ‘selective college’5 (i.e.
higher education institution), though selective institutions charged lower tuition than many
non-selective institutions, due to the provision of financial aid in selective institutions (pp.
5–6). The researchers found the application behaviour of most of the low-income high
achievers differed greatly from that of their high-income counterparts. High-income high
achievers followed advice to apply to a mix of highly selective and less selective insti-
tutions. Low-income high achievers opted for uniformly safe choices. Typically, they were
from districts too small to support selective public high schools or a mass of fellow high
achievers, and/or were unlikely to encounter a teacher, counsellor or student who had
attended a selective institution.
Hoxby’s and Avery’s finding on the ‘under-matching’ of poor and remote students are
replicated in Chankseliani (2013) study of rural students in Georgia. ‘Of two applicants
with the same general aptitude’, the odds for an applicant from a mountainous village to
apply to a least prestigious institution rather than a most prestigious one are about ‘12 times
as high as the odds for an applicant from the capital’ (pp. 438–439). In the UK, Boliver
(2013) finds that ‘applicants from lower class backgrounds and from state schools
remained much less likely to apply to Russell Group universities than their comparably
qualified counterparts from higher class backgrounds and private schools’ (p. 344). Boliver
refers to widespread perceptions that prestige universities are for the privately educated
white upper-middle class (p. 347). When education is seen to belong to someone else,
family aspirations and agency are diminished (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010, p. 113).
Under-learning
A more subtle form of self-stratification is uncovered by Arum and Roksa (2014). The
extent to which higher education generates vocational capacity and intellectual formation
is a function of student workloads. This is especially crucial for students who are the first in
their families to enter higher education. Whereas affluent students carry the cultural capital
of educated households, and enjoy later advantages also in the labour market, for many
first-generation students, the HPS has more value to add. However, US data indicate that
5 ‘When we say ‘selective college’ in a generic way, we refer to colleges and universities that are in thecategories from ‘Very Competitive Plus’ to ‘Most Competitive’ in Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.There were 236 such colleges in the 2008 edition. Together, these colleges have enrollments equal to 2.8times the number of students who scored at or above the 90th percentile on the ACT or the SAT I’ (Hoxbyand Avery 2013, p. 2).
426 High Educ (2016) 72:413–434
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study time is low relative to other countries, and falling (pp. 11–12). Arum and Roksa
(2014) tracked 1600 students in 25 4-year higher education institutions. Generic academic
competency tests found that after 4 years, the average student had moved from a starting
50 % to the 68 % mark, and 30 % had failed to improve by even one per cent (p. 21 and
pp. 37–38). Yet these students graduated, many with good grade point averages. Arum and
Roksa argue that the shift to the notion of students as consumers, whose satisfaction and
adjustment are uppermost, plus official emphases on extra-curricular activities and peer
networking have conditioned a partial retreat from cognitive rigour. Student assessment of
teaching and curricula affects faculty standing and shapes careers, so faculty demand less.
The case studies in Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) illustrate the socially differential
effects of these trends. Poorer students benefit least from higher education as a position and
network game, in which outcomes are maximised by those with material advantages and
cultural cunning. Poor students gain the most from higher education as hard work and
intellectual formation. Yet Arum and Roksa (2014) find it is the students from highly
selective institutions, the most affluent, that make the largest cognitive gains (pp. 42–44).
Tuition-based stratification
In HPS with significant tuition barriers, the external price structure becomes internalised in
the form of self-stratification, accentuating prior social differences and affecting each of
access, field of study, learning and completion (Arum et al. 2007, pp. 24–25). Free or low
tuition, as in most of Northwest and Central Europe, eliminates this kind of self-stratifi-
cation. When tuition fees are managed on the basis of income-contingent loans as in
Australia and UK, the effects in self-stratification are minimised. Students do not pay at
enrolment and discharge the loan in the form of increased tax obligations only when their
earnings fall above the repayment threshold. This reduces the disincentive effects of tui-
tion, and its socio-economic bias, except for earning students who pay in the year of study
(Chapman 2014; Callender 2013). This facility is not available in the US, where higher
education combines the differentiation of families on the basis of institutional selectivity
with differentiation by financial cost.
The consequences for American social equality are explored in a large body of research
and commentary on tuition barriers. Mettler (2014) notes that whereas in 1971 the average
cost of attending 4-year public higher education institution was 42 % of the income of
bottom quintile families, by 2011 the figure was 114 %. For top-income quintile families,
that average cost rose from 6 to 9 % of income (p. 121). In many community colleges,
families meet more than half the costs (p. 122) though the qualifications are often marginal
(Roksa et al. 2007; Hansen 2011). Federal PELL grants cover a declining share of tuition
(PELL Institute 2015, pp. 19–20). The US GTER hovers around 90 %, but there is steep
stratification inside participation (Geiger 2015). In 2013, 77 % of persons in the top family
income quartile completed a degree by age 24 years, almost double the 40 % in 1970. In
the bottom quartile, the graduation rate rose from 6 to 9 % between 1970 and 2013. In the
second bottom quartile, it rose from 11 to 17 % (p. 31). Less than 40 % had a degree by
24 years. Others dropped out, had 2-year diplomas of low value, or gained degrees slowly.
US higher education ‘stratifies people by income group rather than providing them with
ladders of opportunity’ (Mettler 2014, p. 8). US financial disincentives and self-stratifi-
cation are compounded by larger social inequalities, which limit higher education’s
potential social effects: inherited wealth, income regulation, labour and capital markets,
and state tax and transfers (Smeeding 2005). OECD data, using Gini coefficients, compare
the level of income inequality before government taxes and transfers (‘market-generated’
High Educ (2016) 72:413–434 427
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inequality), to the level of inequality after taxes and transfers. The data for 2012 show that
while in most countries government activity reduced market-generated inequality by
35–45 %, the US state did so by only 24 %, and Mexico by just 3 % (OECD 2015).
When social inequality is very high, people from low SES backgrounds invest less in
education and skills. They have less capacity to meet educational costs, less prospect of
entering high-value institutions, and less prospect of turning degrees into careers. Over the
generations, their relative position deteriorates (OECD 2014b, p. 12). The comparison by
Cingano (2014) across the OECD countries suggests that a rise in income inequality of 6
Gini points reduces the probability of individuals with parents of low educational back-
ground being in tertiary education by 4 percentage points. However, ‘inequality does not
have any impact on the probability of graduating from tertiary education in the case of
individuals with medium or high family background’ (pp. 24–26).
Social mobility and higher education
What then is the extent of social mobility in different countries and what role does higher
education play? Mobility is difficult to define, track and measure; and data on social
mobility in a broad range of countries have yet to be developed. Studies are largely
confined to the OECD nations. Corak (2012) measures social mobility in terms of the
‘intergenerational elasticity in earnings’ (IEE), the percentage difference in earnings in the
child’s generation associated with the percentage difference in the parent generation. ‘An
intergenerational elasticity in earnings of 0.6 tells us that if one father makes 100 % more
than another then the son of the high-income father will, as an adult, earn 60 % more than
the son of the relatively lower income father’ (p. 2). Denmark, Norway and Finland each
have an IEE of less than 0.20, whereas Canada is at 0.18, and Germany 0.32, France 0.41.
The US is at 0.47, indicating low social mobility (p. 10). Corak (2012) plots OECD
nations’ Gini coefficients against their IEEs. The line of best fit indicates a clear associ-
ation between (a) high income inequality and (b) high IEE, meaning relatively low social
mobility. However, these data not clarify the role of higher education in social mobility.
The OECD measures intergenerational educational mobility by comparing the odds of
enrolling in tertiary education for two groups: those with at least one parent who attended
tertiary education and those neither of whose parents attended tertiary education. Ameri-
cans from tertiary educated families were 6.8 times more likely to access tertiary education
than those from non-tertiary families. England (6.3) was similar. Scandinavia ranged from
Finland (1.4) to Denmark (3.0). In South Korea mobility was 1.1 (OECD 2014a, p. 93). But
these data on educational mobility are not linked to income or occupational status out-
comes. Table 3 summarises the OECD and Corak (2012) data.
There is no study that conclusively establishes the role of higher education in mobility,
though it is clear this varies by country. All that can be stated with confidence is that
societies with egalitarian income distribution and high social mobility have HPS higher
education, a relatively low level of private investment to secure positional advantage, and
school systems with high and distributed learning achievement (OECD 2014c). This
includes the Nordic countries, Benelux, Canada and South Korea. In contrast, the US has
highly unequal incomes (Table 3, OECD 2014b; Piketty 2014; Saez 2013), low social
mobility, and weak school learning achievement stratified by social background, plus very
stratified higher education, high private sector tuition fees, growing public sector fees, and
an HPS with high entry but much lower and socially skewed graduation. In 2011, the US
428 High Educ (2016) 72:413–434
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Table 3 Income inequality (2012), two indicators of social mobility (2000s and 2012), and spending ontertiary education (2011), OECD countries with available data. Sources: Table prepared by author. Datafrom OECD (2014a, p. 93 and p. 232); OECD (2015); Corak (2012)
Gini coefficientaftertax/transfers(2012)
Ratio post-taxincome at 90/10percentiles (2012)
Socialmobility 1:IIE (2000s)
Socialmobility 2:odds ratios(2012)
Funding of tertiaryeducation as aproportion of GDP(2011)
Publicsources%
Privatesources%
Denmark 0.249 2.8 0.15 3.0 1.8 0.1
SlovakRepublic
0.250 3.2 n.a. n.a. 0.8 0.2
Norway 0.253 3.0 0.17 2.0 1.6 0.1
CzechRepublic
0.256 3.0 n.a. n.a. 1.2 0.3
Finland 0.260 3.1 0.18 1.4 1.9 0.1
Sweden 0.274 3.3 0.27 2.3 1.6 0.2
Austria 0.276 3.5 n.a. 5.1 1.4 0.1
Netherlands 0.281 3.3 n.a. 2.8 1.3 0.5
Switzerland 0.285 3.5 n.a. n.a. 1.3 n.a.
Germany 0.289 3.5 0.32 5.1 1.1 0.2
Poland 0.298 3.9 n.a. 9.5 1.0 0.3
Ireland 0.304 3.8 n.a. 3.3 1.2 0.3
France 0.306 3.6 0.41 6.0 1.3 0.2
SouthKorea
0.307 n.a. n.a. 1.1 0.7 1.9
Canada 0.315 4.2 0.19 2.6 1.6 1.2
Australia 0.326 4.4 0.26 4.3 0.7 0.9
Italy 0.327 4.4 0.50 9.5 0.8 0.2
Spain 0.335 4.9 0.40 3.9 1.0 0.3
Estonia 0.338 4.7 n.a. 4.7 1.4 0.3
UnitedKingdom
0.350 4.2 0.50 6.4a 0.9 0.3
UnitedStates
0.390 6.2 0.47 6.8 0.9 1.8
Japan n.a. n.a. 0.34 5.1 0.5 1.0
Chile n.a. n.a. 0.52 n.a. 0.8 1.7
‘For example, an intergenerational elasticity in earnings of 0.6 tells us that if one father makes 100 % morethan another, then the son of the high-income father will, as an adult, earn 60 % more than the son of therelatively lower income father’ (Corak 2012, p. 2)
‘Odds ratios’ compare the odds of enrolling in tertiary education for two groups of 20–34 year olds—thosewith at least one parent who attended tertiary education (the numerator) and those neither of whose parentsattended (the denominator; OECD 2014a, p. 93)
n.a. data not available, IIE Intergenerational Elasticity in Earningsa England and Northern Ireland only
High Educ (2016) 72:413–434 429
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GTER peaked at 95.3 % of the age cohort. Yet because many students drop out before
completion, and others stop at the 2-year diploma level, in the same year the graduation
rate at degree level was only 38.9 %, a 56.4 % gap between the tertiary participation rate
and degree graduation rate (UNESCO 2015).
National variations
There are structural variations in the high social mobility countries. Nordic HPS have fairly
‘flat’ stratification, high public spending and no tuition. Canadian stratification and tuition
are higher than in Europe but more modest than in the US. There is high spending from
both public and private sources, while public policy emphasises citizen rights as in Europe.
In South Korea, high social mobility (Table 3) is joined to a stratified HPS with emphasis
on elite universities, and high private costs in other institutions. The tendency of the highly
stratified HPS to exacerbate unequal social outcomes is cushioned by Korean equality in
income determination and regional growth (Lee et al. 2012), a school system that ensures
all graduates have advanced literacy, and East Asian not European/American educational
culture (Marginson 2013). The results of the OECD (2014c) Programme of International
Student Assessment show that all East Asian societies place exceptional value on learning;
and the desire for educational success runs so deep in low SES families that private costs
stratify ambition, participation and completion less than is the case in Europe and the US.
Conclusions
Education is a positional good subject to an absolute scarcity of high-value opportunities.
Places in elite institutions and streams confer identifiable social advantage. These factors in
themselves power the growing family investment of energy, time and (often) money in
higher education, and drive the natural drift of that investment upwards to the leading
institutions. However, the common public good is maximised when value differentials
between institutions and fields of study are moderate, the ‘floor’ of educational quality in
mass institutions is high, and the material and cultural conditions governing access and
completion are equalised as far as practicable, consistent with human freedoms.
High participation higher education is becoming near-universal across the world. Sub-
Saharan Africa is the last regional holdout. Yet in low- and middle-income countries, it is
not enough to build greater social inclusion by growing quantitative participation and
focusing on enhancing the relative opportunities of women and ethnic populations that
have been under-represented or excluded. The more difficult issue is the relationship
between educational inequality and socio-economic inequality. To ensure that the
emerging HPS provides a broad pathway for social mobility, it is essential to maximise the
autonomous allocative social power of higher education and build egalitarian structures
within it. The Nordic countries provide the most advanced examples of broadly distributed
social value in HPS higher education.
Five conditions strengthen the positive allocative social role of HPS. It must be said that
these conditions absorb significant state resources and rest on a viable tax system, con-
ditions not always present in low- or middle-income countries. First, the funding of higher
education is largely from public sources. If tuition fees are charged, income-contingent
loans are used and there is extra support for under-participating social groups. Second,
private sector provision either plays a negligible role as in the Nordic world or is closely
430 High Educ (2016) 72:413–434
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regulated to ensure social inclusion and quality of learning as in South Korea and Japan.
Third, institutional stratification is modest. Research and professional training functions are
broadly distributed. The nation may need to engage in WCU building to strengthen
national science and elevate university prestige but WCUs should be coupled with policies
ensuring a strong second tier and healthy mass higher education. Fourth, the state values
rigorous learning and ensures that autonomous institutions, and processes of assessment
and selection, are free from manipulation by powerful families (either directly or via the
state) who seek competitive advantage. This maximises the opportunity for low SES
students to move up through their own efforts. Finally, the scope of social regulation is
extended to improve equity in graduate labour market selection.
However, policies designed to maximise social equality in and through higher education
should be kept in perspective and balanced with other programmes. The old hubris that
education alone can create socially just societies should be put aside. Though the evidence
that has been mustered here on HPS, inequality and mobility is largely circumstantial, it
suggests that more equal educational outcomes or greater mobility are hard to achieve in
highly unequal societies. Higher education is not the only driver of social mobility. It is
necessary but not sufficient, one part of a chain of institutional effects. If income is the
measure of equality, then income determination, tax and transfers have more direct effects
than does education sui generis. If social equality is measured in terms of occupational
status, cultural capital, or personal agency, then higher education can have a larger effect
than it can in relation to income distribution, provided that these qualities are not confined
largely to students from socially advantaged backgrounds.
Above all, education can only function as an equaliser when this is supported by social
consensus. Nordic egalitarianism in education and society is sustained by broad agreement
on equality and mobility, grounded in a threshold level of trust and equality of respect, and
consistently supported by state policy (Gartner and Prado 2012).
Acknowledgments The term ‘high participation systems’ was coined by Anna Smolentseva. Thank youalso to Brendan Cantwell.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Inter-national License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and thesource, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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